Cosmeceuticals and Nutraceuticals

What in the heck are these things? My husband heard the word Nutriceuticals on an advertisement the other day and laughed and gave a big eyeroll, but they are words I have heard tossed around a good bit lately. According to Dr. Perricone, in The Wrinkle Cure:

[...] I have devised topical solutions that allow antioxidants to penetrate the skin. Because these solutions are more than just cosmetics, but not quite pharmaceuticals, the term cosmeceutical was created to convey their uniqueness.

So what is a Nutraceutical?

[...] this combines nutrition and pharmaceutical to describe foods containing supplements from natural sources that are thought to deliver a specific health benefit. Other terms employed are functional food, pharmafood and FoSHU (“Food for Specified Health Use”). [...] The difference now is that they are either produced in purified or concentrated form by bioengineering methods, or are enhanced through genetic methods, as in a range of vegetables now being put on the market which contain elevated levels of naturally-occurring substances believed to ward off cancer. Another characteristic, their proponents argue, is that such supplements have proven health value. Nutraceuticals pose problems for regulatory authorities who are still working out whether they are primarily foodstuffs or whether they should be controlled by the much stricter guidelines applied to medicines. [source]

So, in short, a cosmeceutical is applied topically, and a nutriceutical is ingested. These are newish words (coined in the 1990’s) to describe healthful supplementation with beneficial vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Caveat emptor, however – these words are also key words in many a marketing scheme. In my opinion, the ones that work will soon enough be made in to some less expensive and readily available products by trusted manufacturers (Nivea’s Visage CoQ10, for example). I would not suggest being the first on your block to spend high dollars on the latest and greatest cosmeceutical product until it has been tested well and proven by the masses to truly be beneficial. The way our system works, if it is good, it will make it out to a reasonably priced and readily available product soon enough.

Scientists like Dr. Perricone and Dr. Weil have worked on products to benefit you from the inside out, and both of them have come up with some interesting and well received product lines. I have been using Dr. Weil’s Plantidote (from Origins) with great results, and the more I read of The Wrinkle Cure, the more I would like to give Perricone’s products a try, but most of them are really way out of my budget. Has anyone used Dr. Perricone’s line of skin care? I would be very interested to hear what you think if you have, and if you could choose only one of Dr. Perricone’s products, which would it be?

[Image source]